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January 27, 2006

Pentagon spied on Parkin

Friends of Scott Parkin

MEDIA RELEASE

Pentagon spied on Parkin

Monday 23 January, 2006: US peace activist Scott Parkin's Houston-based anti-war group was spied on by a top-secret Pentagon counter-intelligence agency in 2004, according to a report in Newsweek magazine (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965509/site/newsweek).

The peaceful protest, organised by Scott Parkin and his group Houston Global Awareness on June 29, 2004, was attended by approximately ten local peace activists.

The protest involved handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to employees of giant military contractor Halliburton to draw attention to allegations that the company over-charged for military food contracts in Iraq.

A report in Newsweek this week reveals that the Pentagon's Counter Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA) filed a report on the Houston protest, which took place outside Halliburton's headquarters in Houston, Texas.

Speaking from San Francisco, Mr Parkin said he was "disturbed, but not surprised" by the latest revelations.

"The theme of the protest was to was 'cook food, not books'", Mr Parkin said from San Francisco today.

"It's unbelievable that this simple act of street theatre could be considered a potential threat to national security by the Pentagon."

In September 2005, Mr Parkin's detention and forced removal from Australia sparked protests around the country.

Mr Parkin's detention followed his participation in a similar protest outside the Sydney headquarters of Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown and Root.

The Australian Government has denied that the decision to detain and deport Mr Parkin on national security grounds was influenced by information or pressure from US intelligence agencies.

In October, ASIO Director-General Paul O'Sullivan admitted that Mr Parkin had not been involved in violent activity in Australia. Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock has refused to divulge the contents of the adverse security assessment that led to the Mr Parkin's removal from the country.

"I find it disturbing that acts of lawful, permitted dissent are being criminalised in this way," Mr Parkin concluded.

Further background available at:
Scott Parkin Org

Posted by Willikers at 12:57 PM

January 19, 2006

Indiscriminate killing goes better with Coke

Courtesy Michael Leunig and The Age

Posted by Willikers at 12:41 PM

January 16, 2006

Chile joins Spain in truly governing for all of us

Michelle Bachelet and daughter

It's almost unbelievable. The people of Chile have elected their first female president. More importantly, Michelle Bachelet is a single mother and a survivor of Pinochet's torture. That makes her victory even sweeter, because she has defied the worldwide trend of the single-mother-hating radical right, which in country after country has initiated coups and fixed elections to install governments of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.

Bachelet has declared that she will take advantage of record copper prices to improve education and conditions for the less fortunate. What would her opponent, conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera, have done with all that booty? Trickled it down to the poor? Hah!

Michelle Bachelet joins President José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain as just about the only leaders on this planet who genuinely acknowledge the existence, the worth, and the hopes and dreams of all human beings.

Is this the road forward? With people finally waking up and taking responsibility for the policies that affect their own well being? Let's hope so.

South America seems to be the mother lode continent for repudiation of the right. There is indigenous Amerindian Evo Morales, the new president of Bolivia, who may or may not survive the compromises of office. And who can not love Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, if for no other reason than he keeps dodging Dubya's bullets.

But for today, all congratulations go to Michelle Bachelet. Por Chile. Por La Gente.

Links:
Chile elects socialist president
Chile elects first female president
Michelle Bachelet Official Site
Michelle Presidente
Previous Bilegrip article

Posted by Willikers at 11:49 AM

January 15, 2006

When Madmen Ruled The World

Axis of Evil

God, go git 'em	Allah, smite the infidels
Umeruhca's Dubya	Iran's Ahmadinejad

Posted by Willikers at 3:08 PM

The Weekly Gee (7)

Copyright © 2006, Maurie Gee

Posted by Willikers at 3:01 PM

January 8, 2006

Big Bad Gough vs Nasty Little Johnny

Conservatives all over this blighted land are getting their rocks off on recent revelations of the disasters that befell the Whitlam Government in its terminal phase. Here is Marilyn Shepherd's letter to The Sunday Age, in which she reminds us of the infinitely worse disasters perpetrated by the present government, the one these same conservatives so love.

We need to compare what John Howard has done with what Gough Whitlam did. Then we would wonder how on earth Howard has managed to survive scandal after scandal for nearly 10 years: children un-thrown; TAMPA; SIEV-X; children in detention for years on end; illegal invasion of Iraq - and no WMDs; housing that is impossible to afford; one hour's work a week now considered a "job"; the looming sale of Telstra even though its share price is peanuts; destruction of the unions; workers' rights eliminated by a mad ideology; hundreds of residents deported or illegally detained; a baby refugee dying of negligence within 18 hours of arrival; and the horror of AWB paying $300 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime.

And now we have "terror" laws that can have any of us locked in isolation for making a phone call, or buying nail-polish remover or paint thinners; jailed for sedition; and jailed for being stateless.

When will Howard's record of deceit, lack of accountability and deranged hubris get an airing? And when do his cruel and incompetent ministers start getting sacked, as they should under a Westminster system? Or is Terry Lane right in saying we are truly the 51st US state in the mad hope it will "protect" us?

Posted by Willikers at 4:52 PM

The Weekly Gee (6)

Copyright © 2005, Maurie Gee

Posted by Willikers at 4:49 PM

January 1, 2006

Read it and weep

Uncle Terry sums it up for us as we begin the new year, 2006. He kindly reminds us that for all our ranting about John Howard, it is the capture of Labor by the corporates that has led us to despair. There is no one in politics with any power to whom we can hitch our little red wagon of hope. Sure, the economy is a ripper, but society is riven. As dear old Terry says, "caring is old-fashioned." Worse than that, it is despised.

Terry Lane: Two rights make politics all wrong

A friend - a former politician of distinction and integrity - wrote to me recently: "It seems to me that these recent months have been far worse than the darkest days of our common membership of the Reservoir branch of the ALP some 40 years ago."

He was talking about the mid-60s when, at the 1966 election, the country was gung-ho about killing Vietnamese communists and voted so resoundingly for Harold Holt to keep at it that the Labor Party all but disappeared from federal parliament. The Tories were triumphant around the country. Holt promised US president Lyndon Johnson he would go all the way.

They were "darkest days" indeed. And yet there was an energy and an optimism and, dare we say it, an idealism abroad. The anti-war movement was growing. Protest was vigorous. There were two distinct ideologies contending.

In 1966 smart alecs did not pour scorn on the concepts of left and right in politics. The Labor Party was not yet completely the captive of capital. We believed that there was a momentum in political events and that eventually - possibly soon - things would change.

We had hope! Hope! What a pathetic delusion. The best we can manage now is a sort of fatalistic resignation.

Watching, hearing and reading the nauseating reaction to the death of K. F. B. Packer with the occasional footage of him hectoring a parliamentary committee and boasting that he paid as little tax as he could get away with was a lesson in how times have changed. Packer numbered among his mates influential politicians from both the Liberal and Labor parties. In '66 such a situation would have been unthinkable.

No media mogul in '66 would have permitted his outlets to print or broadcast a good word about the Labor Party. That the Liberals were the party of capital and Labor the guardian of the rights of workers was taken for granted. Opposition meant just that, having an opposing vision and program for an ideal society.

On the day that Kerry Packer began to flaunt his friendship with and political preference for a Labor prime minister, the nation was changed forever. In Marx's prophetic words the government had become "a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie".

Australia is now a replica of the US which, Gore Vidal says, has a "kind of corporate system. We have only one political party, which is the party of corporate America, and it has two right wings, one called Republican and one called Democratic."

That is what is different about Australia in 2005 from '66 - the absence of political choice. Tweedledum and Tweedledee were never such identical clones as the Liberal Party and the ALP. When Liberal or Labor politicians retire from parliament either is equally welcome to go on the payroll of merchant banks they have assisted while in office.

Last year was one of darkest, except to those for whom the shackles on capital have been thrown off - it's sad for Kerry that he died just before he got the go-ahead to minimise his employees' wages. Bad timing.

But for the majority of us it is all a matter of indifference and boredom. Perhaps the majority is right. Who cares? This isn't '66, mate. Caring is old-fashioned.

Reprinted from The Sunday Age, 1 January 2006: Two rights make politics wrong

Posted by Willikers at 3:31 PM